I think that when people criticize Danny Ainge's latter years here, a lot of the criticism stems from the team's decisions in the 2016 and 2019 drafts. Yes, the biggest "what if" is passing on Giannis after scouting him, but that was one missed pick on a superstar that caught the league by surprise. The 2016 and 2019 drafts were different, in that the selections were shaped by financial / roster decisions.
As a refresher, here were our picks:
2016:
#3 - Jaylen Brown (obviously a home run)
#16 - Guerschon Yabusele
#23 - Ante Zizic
#31 and #35 - traded to Memphis for 2019 LAC #1
#45 - Demetrius Jackson
#51 - Ben Bentil
2019:
#14 - Romeo Langford
#20 - traded to Philly for #24 (traded to dump Baynes' salary) and #33 (Carsen Edwards)
#22 - Grant Williams
#51 - Tremont Waters
Now, even acknowledging that mid- to late first rounders are a crap shoot, that's a pretty significant lack of success. So, what was the problem? And was it inevitable?
In 2016, our draft decisions were informed by roster slots. We went into the draft with the philosophy of either stashing picks, or trading them for value. We went into the draft with six picks, and only ended up utilizing two 2017 roster spots on them: Jaylen Brown and Demetrius Jackson.
Our 2017 roster ended up being:
Bradley
Brown
Crowder
Green
Horford
Jackson
Jerebko
A. Johnson
Mickey
Olynyk
Rozier
Smart
Thomas
Young
Zeller
As most of us probably remember, Jackson, Young and Mickey were complete dead weight. It seems completely counter-productive to pass on draft picks because of roster spots, and then utilize 20% of the roster on guys who couldn't produce at the NBA level.
Perhaps most difficult to understand is, what were we thinking giving a roster spot to Jackson? Full disclosure: I like the guy a lot. I thought he'd be an NBA player. But, if anybody is going to be stashed overseas or in the G-League, why not him? That would have allowed us to use the #16 on a better pick. And who was out there at the time? Malik Beasley, Caris Lavert, Pascal Siakim, Malcolm Brogdon and the guy that I think many of us wanted Ainge to draft: Dejounte Murray. Murray was forecast as a borderline lottery pick, and somehow almost fell out of the first round. We could have taken him at #16 or #23, but were hyper-focused on not using a roster spot. Instead, we gave that spot to a vastly inferior player in Jackson. That's just bad decision making, several times over.
2019 was another situation where we didn't take the best player available when it was our turn, but there was another seeming mistake: not trading up to secure our guy. This was the draft where Danny pounded the table when Tyler Herro was taken one spot ahead of us. You have to wonder: did Danny pick up the phone and offer the #20 and/or the #22 to move up to #13? Yes, #14 + #20 for #13 isn't necessarily a good trade value-wise, but was it on the table? Sometimes, when you really like a guy, you need to pay the price to get him.
One has to wonder: did we not trade up because our focus was on clearing max cap space? As we all know, we traded out of the #20 spot, essentially for a salary dump of Baynes and Carsen Edwards. Available at #20: Matisse Tybulle and our purported target, Brandon Clarke. Did Ainge get greedy here? Wouldn't it have made sense to take the player we wanted at #20, and then figured out another way to clear cap space? We already knew that Horford and Kyrie were gone at that point (despite it being during the tampering period). Could we have tried to do a sign and trade, either keeping Baynes or sending him elsewhere? If not, shouldn't we have taken our target at #20, and moved the #22 in the salary dump? Yes, we picked up the #33 pick, but the second round that year was very weak.
Obviously, any team's draft can be nitpicked, particularly in hindsight. But, to me, these two drafts are good examples of what not to do on draft night. You can't go into it with the plan of using your picks to "stash" players, or to make salary dumps. (Danny arguably combined both of these issues in the 2021 draft, getting poor value for the #30 pick to save money and because we didn't want to add another rookie). If one of these picks had gone the right way -- particularly in that 2016 draft -- we might already be talking about having the coveted "third star" on the roster. Instead, we keep using picks to buy our way out of past mistakes, which long-term can be crippling to a franchise.
I appreciate this post and don’t necessarily disagree with the OP here, but in general I think we spend way too much time nitpicking who was chosen in the draft in the area of 20-60. You’re not supposed to hit on players in this range; when you do, it’s gravy. Ainge has had plenty of misses beyond those two drafts in that range. He’s also had some real gems. (A guy named Rondo comes to mind, for instance.)
The OP himself acknowledges the “home run” of Jaylen at #3. Most of us on wanted Kris Dunn, but Ainge went with the raw kid with the shaky jump shot. A couple years later he’s scoring 25 ppg and looks like a multi time al star. Those are the picks that make or break a franchise, not the ones at the back end of the draft, and Ainge’s track record with those picks is solid.
I agree its really not fair to be overly judgmental of post lottery picks as the league wide track record for those picks isn't great. My criticism would be more directed at DAs inability to either consolidate draft assets into higher probability higher picks or trade for future picks out of these multiple pick drafts. Even that was a tall task given the high asking price to move up and teams unwillingness to relinquish future assets.
Also, teams are expected to find players in the second half of the first round. Danny has done it many times. 2016 and 2019 were tough because Danny got cute for reasons other than finding the best possible talent.
Topic: Two Bad Drafts: 2016 and 2019 (Read 7155 times)